


with the loneliness (of you mighty men)

by burgundians



Series: holy wine [3]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 18:25:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11423595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burgundians/pseuds/burgundians
Summary: There is a long tally of corpses and misdeeds with Percival Graves’ name all over it and Credence Barebone had been one more on that list.He’s not anymore and that’s enough.





	with the loneliness (of you mighty men)

 

 

> Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.   
>                                                  Quit milling around the yard and come inside.
> 
> \- Richard Siken

 

 

Percival Graves will always remember that one moment of Letitia sitting at her vanity. The pale gold ball gown pooled around her, her waist impossibly narrow. Her white hands reached up to adjust her décolletage and he traced their path with attentive eyes, seeing them pause to tuck a stray curl in her chignon.

He could look at her for hours.

Her puffy sleeves rustled when she raised her soft, white arms, a thin bracelet glinting in the candlelight. 

“Won’t you come out, my brave knight?” She had laughed into the mirror, seeing it share a conspiratorial smile over her shoulder and he shuffled out from the shadows, hidden from his escape from Nurse.

Letitia Fleming had been a great beauty in her youth. He had heard that his entire life and it had never been truer than in that moment, his small fingers clutching at her skirt, seeing the embroidered flowers rustle in the invisible wind.

“Do I look nice, darling?”

“You look beautiful, Mama.” She made a funny face at him and lightly tapped his nose with the powder puff. He threw himself in her lap, clutching at her dress. Her arms, her wonderful, wonderful arms, circled him as she bent down to hug him.

“My lovely boy.” She had whispered in his hair, voice tight.

She froze at the sound of heavy footsteps outside her door, the impatient tapping burning into his memory.

Standing up, she laid a gentle hand on his head, thumb stroking over his bangs.

How many men had wanted her, he had wondered twelve years later, returning to Ilvermorny with a mourning brassard over his jacket sleeve, and none so little as Thaddeus Graves.

~

In the encroaching dawn, Credence’s chest rises and lowers.

He breathes him, the smell of his hair, of his skin, the salty taste of his sweat.

It’ll be morning soon. In the dark, he laces their fingers together.

~

There’s a spot in Central Park. Hidden by the foliage in good weather, in warm days and sunny afternoons. Credence used to sit on the right side of the park bench.

He takes the left, in sight of a seated man of bronze, the folds of his coat thrown over his chair, some no-maj he had never bothered with the name of, despite Credence’s curious glances at their constant and silent chaperone. 

The day allows for a brief opening in a rainy November. In the distance, he can hear children laughing. His knee twinges.

He hasn’t been back here in a year.

“I’m sorry. You deserved better than you got.” The air does not deserve his words, but Credence isn’t there to hear them. “You deserved better than me.”

A lack of love is the constant flaw of Graves men and women. He’d seen it in father, in the seventeen years spent tormenting his wife, in his brother, tucking his pants as he left a French whore’s bedroom, in his sister, collecting lovers and husbands and just as quickly throwing them away.

It was an ugly moment when he realized he didn’t even know if Credence had a favorite color, had been too busy looking at him, cataloguing him in parts, to bother with the simplest scraps of insight.

He had been drawn to him because he had been beautiful and horrible in equal measure.

Percival had always liked to look at the grotesque. His old place had been full of them, a particular vice of his. A Flemish triptych of the Last Judgement, a Houdon bust of an ugly old man, a venetian casket of delicately carved bone, for a long ago bride and groom. He sends it all back to the Graves House.

He only keeps the Lucretia holding her knife. He hates the sight of it but he has never been able to part with it. There are worse demons than even Gellert Grindelwald in the corners of his mind.

The inconspicuous piece of paper in his hands has been folded and refolded and ripped apart and quickly melded back together with a hasty _Reparo_.

Let it be true.

 _The diner on the corner of Columbus and 82_ _ nd _ _Street. 10 o’clock._

_C. B._

Please, let it be true.

~

When Percival awoke in St. Cyprian’s, the first familiar face he saw was Clothilde’s. He didn't feel the impulse to kiss her and that’s how his muddled mind reminded itself that no, almost ten years have passed, her sons are grown boys in Ilvermorny and not stumbling infants.

“Shouldn’t you be in Lafayette?” He had rasped out and she had smiled and bent down to kiss his forehead.

Credence has passed too, he was told by a carefully impassive Seraphina, dead at twenty-three, too young for it to be fair, too old to incite much sympathy from those around him.

Nobody knows.

Knows what, his hysterical and oft pushed aside conscience asked him, knows what?

There’s nothing to know because Percival Graves never touched Credence Barebone.

It’s like Percival did nothing wrong.

Oh but you did, his conscience crowed, avenged at last, you did so much wrong.

~

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself.” Clothilde says from where she’s sitting in his office.

He’s staring at the swirling silver, half bent over the Pensieve, fingers clenched at the borders.

In the memory, Credence had looked at him when he’d turned away to rummage through his pockets for change to pay for their coffee.

He’d stood straight for a moment, dark eyes wide, like his profile was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen. It is now, he thinks grimly, feeling the ruined skin stretch over his grimace.

“Cher.” His sister-in-law knows the worst and lowest of him, and he of her. It’s the only reason he allows himself this. “You have to stop.”

He will. Soon.

He will make his peace as best he can and plant roses on the roof of his new apartment building.

He will go back to work and ignore the whispers and the looks.

Sometimes, he will even go to the Opera and drown his sorrows in Othello’s own.

~

It’s true.

Mercy help him but it’s true and he’ll lay what’s left of his pride at Credence’s feet.

~

He loves that knee. 

He sees it as he walks into the bathroom, peaking out of the water in a fog of hot mist.

How he wants to climb that Everest, he thinks as Credence leans his head back on the white ceramic, cheeks flushed and a steady drip from his wet hair.

“I like your tub.” Credence says.

“Good.” He manages to choke out and Credence smiles at him.

He feels horribly young, like a schoolboy with a crush, awkward and tongue tied at the sight of someone beautiful. 

He almost wants to write ridiculous poetry but what he did once write in a scrap of paper in a moment of madness is:

_I love you. Would you mind terribly if I lived between your thighs for the rest of my life?_

Bubbles rise through the air and he walks closer and lays a hand on the knee. His pointer finger strokes the patch of wet skin. Underneath, he can feel bone.  

He has to treasure these moments, to hoard them. Credence comes and goes like the wind. 

“I do have a life.” Credence had said when he remarked on it.

He hums. He had almost fancied that Credence just hovered over the city like a cloud, coming down once in a while to give his affections to that old bastard Graves. But he deserves better than that. Percival had used him meanly before, a wordless mannequin for him to project his affections on.

And so Credence has a life, and a place, and a job, something shockingly mundane and menial and Credence had almost laughed when he saw his look of surprise. 

“What did you expect? I know my letters and how to do sums but not much more than that.” He had explained simply. Credence was right but at the same time Percival couldn’t and still can’t shake the feeling that he does know more than that.

He won’t ask. He has his silences and Credence is entitled to his own. Dark rooms inside of more dark rooms where they don’t dare to thread on one another.

The bathwater ripples as Credence adjusts his  _ridiculous_  long legs and he lets his hand slide slowly down the wet skin.

Credence squares his shoulders and looks at him, and he can’t bear to turn his eyes away.

Percival has never been in love like this. Has never treasured the sight of someone’s toes curling from where they sneaked out of the sheets in the middle of the night. 

Has never hoarded the scraps of knowledge Credence sometimes sees fit to hand out like alms.

(“I used to be quite good at numbers.”

“Cream and sugar, please.”

“There were more of us, but they died.”)

Had never bothered with acts of kindness for themselves but now the fruit bowl in the kitchen is always full of oranges. 

He lights the fire because he can see Credence likes it. He buys a pretzel on the way home because Credence devours them.

It’s a poor compensation for the things he did and didn’t do but he doesn’t want to live crushed down by guilt anymore. There is a long tally of corpses and misdeeds with Percival Graves’ name all over it and Credence Barebone had been one more on that list. 

He’s not anymore and that’s enough.

“You’re going to get your clothes wet.” Credence says and Percival nods, but reaches forward from where he’s leaning on the side of the bathtub. His left hand leaves the water and he cups Credence’s face. Distantly, he can feel the moisture from Credence’s hair soaking through the sleeves of his shirt, but he loves those lips, loves their warm, welcoming depths, will have this for as long as he’s allowed.

**Author's Note:**

> The statue mentioned is Fitz-Greene Halleck’s because I am about as subtle as a kick to the face.
> 
> As always, I live and breathe feedback.
> 
> I'm also on tumbr @braganzas :)


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